Forlorn
by Steamboat Ghost
Summary: Two travelers part ways.


**Authors Note: **I don't even know. _The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim_ is only providing a vessel for how I'm feeling right now. I thought I was only forgotten, but it seems I'm also unwanted.

* * *

><p>Forlorn<p>

We'd traveled long together, Illia and I. From the ruins of Darklight Tower where we met, to across the Rift and into the farthest reaches of Skyrim, we journeyed with little other purpose than my driving urge to see the homeland of my people, which I had until now only heard tales of as a youth. She followed at my side and ours was a team whose magicka couldn't be matched. Between the bite of her frost bolts and the blister of my flames, neither bandit nor beast, daedra or dragon, could stand before us.

And yet, as great a team as we made, we remained apart, distant and isolated from each other.

As eager as I was to see the wonders of Skyrim, my journey here had been long and harrowing. I had become mentally weary, isolated from reality by the memories and experiences I held, all of which culminated in Helgen. I had finally reached Skyrim, without any possession or a septim to my name. It was the wrong place at the wrong time. I got caught up in an Imperial raid, locked in chains along with every other Nord present, and sentenced to the chopping block. By forces I can't understand, I escaped, but mentally some part of me remained on that chopping block to be permanently severed.

"Seems we won't make it to the Stormcloak camp tonight," I muttered, looking out into the forested land below from the rocky outcrop where we stood.

"Seems so," she breathed from beneath her cowl, folding her arms.

We made camp on that lonely hill, lying in blankets with the fire between us. On my side, my head resting on rolled sacking, I gazed at her. She seemed to do likewise, the same distant and contemplative look. Fire light played across the camp site, licked at the shadows with it's orange tint in ways only seen at the darkest moments.

Tomorrow, I reflected, we would join the Stormcloak camp and prepare for battle.

The first time I saw Ulfric Stormcloak was on the wagon to Helgen. I had heard his name in passing beforehand, but finding myself on the same prison wagon as him, the contested High King and leader of the rebellion, it was...surreal. He was bound and gagged, but when the steel in his eyes fixated on me...I cannot describe it. I do not expect to ever again feel the stir of duty and desire for self sacrifice that those eyes instilled in me.

Yet it was with some hesitation that I joined the Stormcloaks and pledged allegiance to Ulfric's rebellion. It had pained me to see this land and it's people torn against each other, forced to choose between supporting an empire who may be our only chance of surviving the Aldmeri Dominion's threat against all men, or fighting our own people in a bid for freedom and assertion for our ancient way of life.

Sometimes a man must choose, must fight, even when he is uncertain. I joined the Stormcloaks for the sake of men, for a culture I idolized, for Skyrim.

Illia accepted this in silence, although she herself would take no oath. I asked her later about this.

"I've made enough mistakes, have enough regrets. I do not know which path is right, but this conflict doesn't need me. Whatever the results, I cannot bear the thought of taking the wrong side again."

"Some say inaction is the greater crime."

"Is it?"

* * *

><p>Still we gazed across the fire at one another.<p>

I knew little details of Illia's past, but the circumstances in which we met explained her remote and cautious nature as well as any words could.

I happened on Darklight Tower on accident, having gotten lost on my way to Riften. Finding the outside of the ancient mountainside fortress seemingly deserted, I cautiously entered, hoping to find something worth selling. What I found was Illia, her pallid face beneath dark hooded robes illuminated by the residue of magic and a similarly clothed woman dead on the floor before her.

She hurriedly explained herself, told me of the coven of witches she had been raised with since childhood and that, upon the demand she find a human sacrifice for their unholy rituals, she had refused their demands and faced retribution. She was in a state of panic and, perhaps by the light of divines, her eyes had been opened to the wickedness she had taken part in so many years. She begged me to help her put an end to it, once and for all, to take up the flights of the tower and breach the peak where her own mother presided, preparing the transmutation of her body and soul into the pagan creature known as a Hagraven.

I believed her, saw in her the same desperation that I felt as I fled Helgen, and together we stormed upward. My hands outstretched, I spewed spirals of flames up through the dimly lit corridors as we ran up the steps. The witches of her brethren came to stop us, summoning their own spells and dark magics, but we fell them all without looking back. It was Illia who defeated a Hagraven barring entrance to the ceremonial peak, whose icicle blasts riddled the fowl creature's corpse even as we plucked the key from it's feathered claws.

"My mother, she's behind this door." Illia had said. "We'll need to catch her off guard. You'll have to pose as the sacrifice before we can strike."

I had felt suddenly trapped, deceived into fulfilling the sacrificial role the witch had originally been ordered to meet. Lit by the torches in the gloomy stone room, I looked her in the eyes, expecting deception and menace. They were dark, sullen, deep and contrasted to her ghostly white countenance. But in them I saw the weight of the deed that lay before her.

"Are you sure you can do this?" I asked.

"I...I must. The woman who was my mother...she's gone. I need to put an end to this. Let's go."

There's little to say of what happened. I was seated and bound, and as the ragged witch bent over me with a sacrificial blade, Illia ended the ritual before it could begin, delivering shards of ice as deadly as any blade of iron or steel.

As she untied me from the sacrificial chair, she murmured, "It's...it's over. Thank you. I wish I could remember her as she was, before all this, but it's all I've known. I need to leave this place, forget what took place here, forget..."

"You could come with me." I suggested.

I had made the offer with uncertainty. I didn't know where my future would take me or what dark recesses of the world my journey would deliver me that might remind her of this terrible place. But I sensed in her the same need for movement and freedom that was within me, the same desire to search for new meaning and fulfillment that would eclipse the past.

She accepted, and although our travels together had never been cheery, there were times that we shared a smile or exultation. We'd attended the bardic festival in Solitude together, visited the Mage's college of Winterhold, ventured into the depths of Dwemeri ruins, defeated innumerable bandits and highwaymen, rescued villages from threatening giants, and seen the green aurora in it's deathly ripple above the northern ice flows. Sometimes our time together felt like a lifetime itself.

* * *

><p>We awoke to a misty morning which we passed in silence, gathering our equipment for the march ahead.<p>

"I can't go with you." She said as I saddled my pack on my shoulders.

I looked upon her unfocused, wishing the attachment I felt for her manifested in some other way than what we'd become accustomed to.

"Where will you go?" I found myself asking in a voice far away.

"To a temple, I think. It doesn't matter which one. Serving in the light one of the divines is the right path for me, after dwelling in the darkness so long."

"Has our journey been so dark?"

She smiled, sadly. "It was a good distraction from what I was facing. And for you too, and what you face ahead. We've both felt it."

She met my gaze, held it in that sad but unreadable expression, and left the way we had arrived the night before. I watched as the fog swallowed her from sight.

I turned and headed down the rocky precipice alone.

I did feel it, but it still tasted bitter.


End file.
